Hi, I have a chimney that runs through the middle of my house. It's
part of a block wall on the ground floor then forms it's own brick
square section chimney up through the 1st floor and through the loft.
Two sides of the chimney are incorporated into stud walls on the 1st
floor. It's about 18" square.

Does anyone know if it's easier just to remove the whole thing or to
leave the stack in the loft? If I remove the whole thing clearly
I'll need to get to the top of it - can this be done from within the
loft - i.e. make a hole in the roof, take the chimney top down then
make good the roof mostly from inside? (or put a skylight in)

The other option is to remove only two sides of the chimney on the 1st
floor so that it still supports some of the weight of the complete
chimney above and then have a beam in the loft to support the rest of
it. Trouble is I'd have to get a long beam into the loft and I'm not
sure that's possible.
I guess I could remove the bricks in the loft and have the remaining
stack on a platform?

On the ground floor the chimney breast section would be removed
leaving the original wall in place.

Any other ideas? Just get someone in to do it?!

My downstairs block wall is made of high density blocks and I'm
guessing that the 15" or so protusion of the chimney breast does form
any sort of structural bracing.

On 31 May, 13:01, adder1969 wrote:
Hi, I have a chimney that runs through the middle of my house.

Any other ideas? Just get someone in to do it?!

You could do what the owner of my first house did and just remove the
stack all the way throught the house and then support the external
stack using a steel section from an old bed! This had worked quite
well for many years, but did get picked up on the structural survey.

Alternately do it 'properly':- Get a structural engineer in to
calculate the type of beam you will need, at a cost of £500+. Then get
building regs approval from the local council. £200+ ??

I am in a similar quandry myself with my current house. The cost of
doing the actual work is relatively low, just doing it within the law
is going to add 150% to the cost.

On May 31, 2:20 pm, Tim Decker wrote:
On 31 May, 13:01, adder1969 wrote: Hi, I have a chimney that runs through the middle of my house.

Any other ideas? Just get someone in to do it?!

You could do what the owner of my first house did and just remove the
stack all the way throught the house and then support the external
stack using a steel section from an old bed! This had worked quite
well for many years, but did get picked up on the structural survey.

Alternately do it 'properly':- Get a structural engineer in to
calculate the type of beam you will need, at a cost of £500+. Then get
building regs approval from the local council. £200+ ??

I am in a similar quandary myself with my current house. The cost of
doing the actual work is relatively low, just doing it within the law
is going to add 150% to the cost.

Take the chimney down from the top. It is fairly straight forward to
remove the bricks. Just try not to kill anyone. Then close the hole
with felt and batons then tile it. Following the old batons makes it
fairly easy to do.

Check you can find similar tiles first though. It might be worth
leaving it open for the few days it will take to do the job.

Then just get into the loft and start pulling the brick or blocks off
and passing them down. Don't stack too many in there. You'd be best
getting a friend to give you an hand. It's going to be messy though,
so plenty of fly sheets. And maybe a spray bottle to lay the dust. Try
getting as many out through the roof as is possible

It might be worth taking care with the bricks as they could prove
useful one day. But just chuck em out the window if not.

Balancing the chimney on old beds, bicycles and packing crates is
downright deadly.

Tim Decker wrote:
On 31 May, 13:01, adder1969 wrote:
Hi, I have a chimney that runs through the middle of my house.

Any other ideas? Just get someone in to do it?!

You could do what the owner of my first house did and just remove the
stack all the way throught the house and then support the external
stack using a steel section from an old bed! This had worked quite
well for many years, but did get picked up on the structural survey.

Alternately do it 'properly':- Get a structural engineer in to
calculate the type of beam you will need, at a cost of £500+. Then get
building regs approval from the local council. £200+ ??

I am in a similar quandry myself with my current house. The cost of
doing the actual work is relatively low, just doing it within the law
is going to add 150% to the cost.


people like you lot will be regarded with the same disdain as those who
covered up victorian pine doors with hardboard in the 50's..once the
price of oil gets so high its back to burning Catholics. Or probably
Muslims - on open fires. ;-)

The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Tim Decker wrote:
On 31 May, 13:01, adder1969 wrote:
Hi, I have a chimney that runs through the middle of my house.

Any other ideas? Just get someone in to do it?!

You could do what the owner of my first house did and just remove the
stack all the way throught the house and then support the external
stack using a steel section from an old bed! This had worked quite
well for many years, but did get picked up on the structural survey.

Alternately do it 'properly':- Get a structural engineer in to
calculate the type of beam you will need, at a cost of £500+. Then get
building regs approval from the local council. £200+ ??

I am in a similar quandry myself with my current house. The cost of
doing the actual work is relatively low, just doing it within the law
is going to add 150% to the cost.


people like you lot will be regarded with the same disdain as those who
covered up victorian pine doors with hardboard in the 50's..once the
price of oil gets so high its back to burning Catholics. Or probably
Muslims - on open fires. ;-)

Not to mention what will we send the kiddies up when the schools all
close for lack of, well anything?

Peter
--
Add my middle initial to email me. It has become attached to a country
www.the-brights.net

On May 31, 7:47 pm, Weatherlawyer wrote:
On May 31, 2:20 pm, Tim Decker wrote:





On 31 May, wrote: Hi, I have a chimney that runs through the middle of my house.

Any other ideas? Just get someone in to do it?!

You could do what the owner of my first house did and just remove the
stack all the way throught the house and then support the external
stack using a steel section from an old bed! This had worked quite
well for many years, but did get picked up on the structural survey.

Alternately do it 'properly':- Get a structural engineer in to
calculate the type of beam you will need, at a cost of £500+. Then get
building regs approval from the local council. £200+ ??

I am in a similar quandary myself with my current house. The cost of
doing the actual work is relatively low, just doing it within the law
is going to add 150% to the cost.

Take the chimney down from the top. It is fairly straight forward to
remove the bricks. Just try not to kill anyone. Then close the hole
with felt and batons then tile it. Following the old batons makes it
fairly easy to do.

Check you can find similar tiles first though. It might be worth
leaving it open for the few days it will take to do the job.

Then just get into the loft and start pulling the brick or blocks off
and passing them down.

What I was wondering was, could I make a hole in the roof by the
chimney from the inside to avoid me having to use ladders and/or
scaffolding etc.

If I'm throwing the bricks down outside I really need one of those
flexible tunnels.

As for the tiles I guess I could use some from the side of the garage
that no-one sees (and replace them with others of course)

This is a 1985 house so I'm not really prepared to leave things like
this and the pink and avocado bathrooms suites just so that it has
period fixtures.

In article . com,
adder1969 writes:
What I was wondering was, could I make a hole in the roof by the
chimney from the inside to avoid me having to use ladders and/or
scaffolding etc.

You might find the chimney is bigger than you think when you get
up there. When putting an aerial on mine, I found that when I was
stood on the roof next to it, it towered over me. It never looked
that big from the ground ;-)

If I'm throwing the bricks down outside I really need one of those
flexible tunnels.

When my neighbour took down our shared chimney, he dropped all the
bricks down the flue into his kitchen (which was a building site
at the time).

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]